


Destinies and Impossible Dreams

by Dr_Roslin



Series: Broken Legacies and Hopeful Futures [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ben Solo Loves His Family, Canon-Typical Violence, Deviates From Canon, Gen, HEA implied, No Pregnancy, Safe to Read if Triggered by Pregnancy, Solo family drama, reylo implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29521698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Roslin/pseuds/Dr_Roslin
Summary: “Hey, Solo! Hear you backed the wrong horse, after all.”Reaching over to place a warning hand on his dad’s arm, Ben felt an inescapable sense of doom. Han was smiling and it wasn’t the smile that encouraged you to relax.----To protect their son, Ben, Han Solo and Leia Organa left everything they knew far behind. As unknown forces continue to haunt them, though, Ben wonders at the cost, even as old enemies and new challenges beset them.
Relationships: Ben Solo & Han Solo, Chewbacca & Ben Solo & Han Solo & Leia Organa, Leia Organa & Ben Solo & Han Solo, Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Broken Legacies and Hopeful Futures [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092818
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Destinies and Impossible Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> For my Solo boys.  
> The nice thing with them is that you always know what to expect and they always stand behind those they love. 
> 
> The third and middle part of my "Broken Legacies and Hopeful Futures" series. 
> 
> Why is it always about the Skywalker Legacy and never about the Han Solo Legend? Do think everyone gets out of the Corellian mob alive?

“Hey, Solo! Hear you backed the wrong horse, after all.”

Reaching over to place a warning hand on his dad’s arm, Ben felt an inescapable sense of doom. Han was smiling and it wasn’t the smile that encouraged you to relax.

“Now, I know you’re not referencing my wife,” he said, not bothering to turn to look at the man jeering him from two bar seats over. “Because that would just be dumb.”

 _Fuck_.

Mentally calculating the distance to the exit, Ben prayed Chewie had managed to fix the compressor.

“Seems she’s not such a saint after all, eh?” the man slurs into his drink, either too stupid or too brave for his own good.

Yes, it seems they’d be making an expedited exit from Yavin IV, after all. Grasping his blaster - just to feel the comfort of its well-known weight in his hand, Ben waits for the lout to make the first move as he knew he would. People looking for trouble always did.

Oblivious to the tension rising in Han’s smile, the man keeps blabbing on, being apparently physiologically incapable of shutting his stupid mouth.

“Vader’s daughter, eh?”

_Here we go._

“She’s always been a tempting little piece, but, damn, that’s some bad blood you decided to pass along to your son, Solo.”

Or maybe the jackass just had a death wish. That's the only reason Ben can think of for the way he's being deliberately insulting to the family of one of the Outer Rim's most dangerous smugglers.

“No wonder they’ve always said he’s a bit - squiffy, your son.”

The scrape the bar stool makes as Han shoves it back as he stands echoes through the cantina, and Ben suddenly notices the deadly quiet. His hand on Han’s arm is gently shaken off as his father moves, the impact of his presence suddenly making itself known in this dive.

“I knew the moment I saw you; you were a dumb son-of-a-bitch.”

The latest growth spurt Ben had endured means he’s got a couple of inches on Han, now, though his father is still equally as broad and equally as lean. More important to this moment, he'll always have the famous Solo charisma - which Ben doubts he’ll ever be able to equal - and his deadly presence continues unabated after decades of staring down challengers. He’s still just as fast and he can still be just as mean.

“Lucky for you; I don’t brawl on the floor with useless drunks.”

He pauses to drain the last of his drink in one gulp as the tension builds and the other patrons hold their breaths, some of them obviously preparing to duck under tables.

“And since I’m in a hurry, I don’t have time to clean up the mess should I let _my son_ deal with you.”

All eyes turn to Ben as he stands beside him as if just realizing that the tall young man with the Solo face might indeed be the monster they’d heard of. Although, as Chewie had long drilled into him, drunks in port-side cantinas weren’t usually known for their brains.

“Besides,” Han continued with that same edge to his tone as Ben tried not to let the sudden scrutiny affect him, “ _my wife_ is waiting for us.”

The drunk decides to get in one last shot and Ben wonders again suddenly at his agenda. Wonders how drunk he really is, wonders if someone had sent him.

Someone’s always looking.

It’s definitely time to go.

“And you always have to do what the pretty little Princess says, right?”

Again, Han flashes that smile, even as he gets Ben to the door, sensing as he does that there’s more to this than meets the eye.

As expected, he gets in one more jab on the way.

“You said it yourself; she’s Vader’s daughter. And you’ve no idea what she’s capable of.”

It takes them too long to get back to the _Falcon_ , the streets seemingly clogged with more people than this small port town should have, and Ben’s senses are screaming at him to _move_. He’s not alone in this, since Chewie’s already waiting for them, already in the co-pilot seat even as they arrive.

The engine, too, is already warming as Han slips into the pilot’s seat, and Chewie’s confirmation that the hyperdrive is in order only pushes him to go through pre-flight checks _faster_.

“Find your mother; strap in,” he tosses at Ben as the engine hums, though Ben’s already out the door.

The jolt as they breach the atmosphere seems sharper than usual, the urgency making them all want to get out and push. Leia Organa, though, surfs through it on her feet as she works in the engine room, hands full of wires.

“Your father always has to push it,” she grumbles.

Sliding the panels shut, she reaches out to frame Ben’s face in her hands as she moves out into the corridor, though, as usual, she has to reach way up to do so, even as he bends down to help her. He'd towered over her by the time he'd reached his pre-teens, though, given how tiny she is, small in frame and short in stature, that hadn't been difficult.

“What’s wrong?” she asks with that softness to her voice, and he knows she doesn’t just mean the aborted trip.

She knows him so well, his mother, too well, at times, and a part of him hates how perceptive she is to his moods, hates how easily she able to read him. It’s been this way as long as he can remember, though, or at least it had been since that day she’d found him, at age of five, sitting on the floor of a dirty dive in a forgotten alleyway in the back of Coruscant's underworld, surrounded by the multilateral bodies of his would-be kidnappers. He still remembers her holding him, sobbing in relief at having him safe. Still in her Senatorial robes, she'd held him so tight that neither could breathe properly, uncaring as his grimy hands had marred her normally pristine appearance.

She looks different now, dressed in her practical mechanic’s overalls, though she still has the same braided hair and still moves with the same sense of power and purpose.

She still ‘tsks’ the same way as he confesses his doubts.

“I should’ve never insisted we stop there,” he grumbles into her hair, not looking at her. “Should have known they’d be watching.”

Fifteen years later and they’re still going nowhere; still running, one step ahead of those who would take him, use him, still no closer to figuring out how to control the power coursing within him other than hemming it in completely.

“Ben.”

Her voice is firm, the softness a memory, though she’s more sad than angry.

(He’s seen her angry - when he’s scared her. Heard her angry, too, mainly as she’s yelled at his father. The _Falcon_ ’s bulkheads aren’t thick enough, unfortunately; he’s heard _more than he should_ of what goes on in the Captain's Quarters.)

Still, when she says his name like that, he knows to _listen_. She grasps his face firmly in her hands as she always does when she wants to tell him something he needs to pay attention to, holds him firmly in her orbit.

“You know we needed to fix the hyperdrive; so we needed to set down _somewhere_. Yavin IV was close enough, quiet enough and we knew all along we couldn’t stay long. It was worth the risk for you to check it out.”

He closes his eyes, calms himself, takes deep breaths - one after another after another - forces himself to take his anxiety in hand, slow his overexcited heart.

She’s right.

 _Weigh the risk; weigh the reward -_ it’s what she’d always taught him, so he focuses again on the key question.

“Did Yavin IV have the answers you’ve been looking for?”

The disappointment courses through him even as the lingering adrenaline from the cantina confrontation and the mad rush off of the planet ebbs away.

“No,” he says quietly, trying not to flinch at the worry in her eyes.

The sense of impotence swamps him again. He has no idea what he’s looking for, whether what he’s looking for even exists. All he has are these visions, these flashes of landscapes and feelings. Luke had told him to trust his feelings, but he’s no idea how to do that, even. He has no idea what he’s supposed to do. No idea who he’s supposed to be. Not a Jedi, not a politician, not a smuggler, even, despite the Solo name and his father’s insistence that he always feels safe with him at his back.

Nothing feels right.

Nothing feels _complete_.

He’s struggling to find it, his path, and the constant crippling visions aren’t helping. All he gets are flashes, of lush green forests, of rain-drenched horizons, of beautiful blue seas. Of an island, proud and tall and remote. They’re impossible to trace, these vistas. They come without warning, the visions, accompanied with blinding pain; end just as suddenly, leaving him incapacitated with crippling migraines.

And a sense of loneliness so hollowing it leaves him depressed to the point he can barely himself keep moving.

“Do you ever regret it?”

“Ben?”

She's frowning, the concern mounting in her eyes, but he can't help it. He can’t resist the urge to dive into his mother’s loving embrace, though he can’t look at her as he asks the questions he’s always dreaded the answers to.

“Giving it all up, coming with me on a _useless_ search for- I don’t even know what.”

For her ‘ _squiffy_ ’ son.

Everything. She’d sacrificed everything for him, all of it; her Senatorial career, her comfort, seeing her brother, the prospect of a purposeful life. All to help him control the voice in his head, help him search for the meaning of a Force that flows through him yet eludes his control. They all had; her, his father, Chewie - sacrificed their lives to come with him. Sacrificed everything to hide him, to run with him, just as they’d done since he’d been a small boy. He’d heard the story, naturally, heard them explain it to Luke and Lando and others, but he needed it now, the reassurance that he hadn’t ruined all of their lives.

_If you had it all, to do all over again, would you make the same choices? Do you regret it, choosing me?_

This time it’s his father who answers-

“Was never a choice, kiddo.”

-though his mother’s whiskey-tainted tones chime in-

“At least, never a choice we could ever regret.”

Chewie’s growl is the only warning before the small hug holding three becomes four, his tall frame almost knocking them all over, and Ben delights in his father’s low laugh and his mother’s affectionate grumbling.

“Told ya, kid. A Wookiee always has to have the last word.”

It breaks the tension, clears the moment, as they all go about their tasks, lets Ben refocus on what he needs to do here. Yavin IV was a bust - in regards to the visions, in regards to finding out more about the Force and its hold on him - and hopefully no more than that. The question now is - where to now?

Unsurprisingly, Luke had been less than helpful during their last hurried holo consultation, though he could hardly blame him for not having the right answers, either. He'd been rushing out somewhere, out to the Outer Rim in search of rumours he'd heard. About the way the locals whispered about a child who could see things that only they could see, who could move things that would dwarf anyone, let alone the diminutive frame of a child barely past puberty. 

The transmission had been cut off, and they hadn't heard from Luke since, and Ben can't shake the fact that he feels there are things he needs to know, about Luke's mission, about this mysterious child. He can still feel his uncle, steady in the Force, he knows that much, but there's something else there too, something new. Possibly some new knowledge along with a new protege - Luke had been hoping that the shift in the Force that he'd felt could also lead to finding a means of helping Ben without keeping him entirely cut off from the lifeblood that flowed all around them.

Ben can't help but sigh, forcing the concentration on his patience; he sometimes forgets that his uncle is figuring this out on the fly, too.

He tries, but he can’t forget the half-hidden fear in Luke’s eyes when he’d seen, firsthand, Ben’s aptitude with the dark side of the Force. He can’t forget Luke’s fear, of him, from that moment, even though he’d still only been a child in that moment, hanging onto Chewie’s hand for dear life as he’d arrived. He'd been so scared then, scared of his uncle of all things, scared of what this all this meant, for him, for his family.

No matter how often Chewie took care to reassure him.

“Arghw rkkkaws,” he’d told him, then, just as he often does now.

Ben had learned Wookiee before Basic, loves it more, almost, and it’s how Chewie’s motto echoes in his head.

_You’re capable of anything you can dream up._

It was a Wookiee saying, one Chewie had always been fond of, one his godfather had liked to whisper to him between the fairy tales he’d told him, ones he’d found it difficult to sleep without as a child.

_“Shake the stars,” he’d told him._

_“Ensure the galaxy knows your name.”_

_“We’ll be there to cheer you on every step of the way.”_

Cuddled in Chewie’s massive, furry arms as he'd fallen asleep a child, Ben had found it impossible to believe that anything - anything other than the voice screaming in his head during his worst nightmares, that is - could harm him as long as Chewie was there to keep him safe. 

He hadn’t been entirely right, though he hadn’t been entirely wrong. It was easier now, to fight off the voice in his head that had plagued him during his early years. 

Pretending to speak in his _grandfather’s_ voice, offering counsel.

Urging violence.

Urging vengeance.

The tactics Luke has suggested, all those years ago following the kidnapping attempt and his violent reaction helped. As did the daily mediation.

Lately, though, there was a different voice, screaming in his head.

Younger, wilder.

The rage, the untenable pain, seeping through.

Making the voice almost incoherent at points. And, from the screams echoing through his soul in sympathy - belonging to someone balancing on the very edge. He wanted, almost desperately, to be able to reach the person on the other end of the strange bond.

To reassure them.

Let them know that they wouldn’t always have to be alone.

He didn’t know how he knew that the mysterious being on the other end would take to his reassurance, would cling to it. All he knew was that he had to try.

Try to ease the pain and despair underlying all that rage.

Not least of all to ease the loneliness eating at his heart, as it bounced from her to him and back to her.

The loneliness, the longing, cutting so deep, screaming so wide, sometimes he wondered it didn’t split wide the entire galaxy.

Wondered how he alone was affected so deeply by the screams that shook the stars.

He knows how that can be like, to feel hopeless, to feel as if your life is spinning out of your control. Despite the best efforts of those who love him, it’s always been hard to cling to his determination not to Fall, to avoid the pitfalls that had beset his grandfather. Those few years on Ach-Too, before it became too dangerous for them all to stay in one place, had been instrumental. His memories of his childhood there are idyllic.

The voices were easier to manage, somehow, there.

He'd always had something to occupy him, focus him. Between Luke’s lessons on control, Chewie’s lessons in everything else and the occasional trips with Han, Chewie and the _Falcon_. And Leia’s instruction, invaluable in ways only someone who hadn't met his mother wouldn't understand. He missed it, those days when his brain never had time to eat itself. When all he had to do was focus on the best way to keep the Dark out of his head.

Meanwhile, the memories and the mediation helped. So did the reminders.

They loved him. All of them. He wasn’t his grandfather. He wasn’t a Legacy child. He was more than the confluence of his bloodlines. His only Fate was that which he made. His destiny was his alone to decide.

As his father liked to remind him, he was every bit as much a Solo as he was a Skywalker, more so, in fact, given how little connection his mother felt with her paternal heritage.

Any stories she told of home spoke of Alderaan and Bail Organa. Of her mother, Breha. 

“The only legacy I’ve ever cared for,” she’d always said.

Beyond an exhaustingly researched deep-dive into the life and career of her mother, Amidala Padme of Naboo, the only interest Leia had ever shown in her biological parents had been on Ben’s behalf. Vader she disregarded. Anakin and Padme, she taught Ben about as much as she needed to.

“As a means of allowing you to understand them,” she’d told him. “So the past can’t hurt you.”

She’d always been more interested in the future than the past. It’s one of the many things she and his father had in common. 

“Destiny ain’t shit, kid,” his father says now, his eyes on the lights of hyperspace they can see out the Falcon’s cockpit. “If it were, I would’ve never gotten out of that spaceport when I was still just a kid. I would have been dead and dusted on Corellia long ago, just as my odds said I should be.”

Those brown eyes that always seem to twinkle are a little reflective now, a little bit sad, as he thinks back on those days, on all those he'd left behind.

“I would never have had you, would never have met your mom, none of it. I know, I know; would never have met you, either, Chewie,” he tells his old partner, grinning at Ben as he yells at him from the games table. "All of it; none of it could ever have been foreordained.”

Grinning, his legs slightly spread as he relaxes, a little slumped down in the pilot’s seat, all he needs is a cigarillo like Lando’s and he’d look just like the cocky young smuggler in Ben’s mom’s old holos.

“Never have found the _Falcon_ ; never have run off with her, never have stolen her right from under Lando's nose. And the Kessel Run record was there just _begging_ to be broken.” He smiles reminiscing. “12 parsecs, kid, remember that. We did it in 12 parsecs. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.”

“Anyway, destiny is overrated. You’re my kid, too, you know.”

He smirks, that smile his mom always grumbles at; but that Ben knows she secretly adores.

“The impossible runs in the family.”

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, my gentle friends, next time I start a tweetfic this way - yell at me just to post it on AO3 to begin with. 
> 
> I blame the delightful gif of Han Solo I accidentally found.


End file.
